Third Tron film about to be greenlit

Greetings, programs. Good news! An industry source has told Aint it Cool News that Disney execs are close to giving the green light to a sequel for Tron: Legacy, and an announcement could come any day.

The film itself drew mixed reviews from fans and critics (including us), but most (again, including us) saw the franchise as having huge potential. Tron: Legacy may have had its issues, but the world it created was definitely worth exploring, and a possible sequel can only be good news for fans.

The film opened to lower than expected box office numbers, but Disney may have set its sights a bit higher than it should. The company was hoping for big numbers, really big numbers–to the tune of Avatar’s opening week. In preparation, the PR machine went into overdrive and dropped nearly as much on the promotion of the film as it did on the film itself–well over $100 million, and possibly as high as $130 million on marketing alone. The movie itself was budgeted at nearly $170 million, pushing the total budget for Tron: Legacy over $300 million.

But Tron: Legacy has shown that it has legs, and the worldwide gross is likely to surpass $300 million in the next week—it is currently at $292.9 million as of January 11. Not counting the promotion costs, Tron: Legacy stands in 17th place as the highest grossing film of the last 12 months, and the home sales on blu-ray and DVD, as well as any future licensing to television, should net Disney a solid profit. In fact if the advertising hadn’t been so ridiculously costly, the movie would already be far into the black.

Disney has high hopes for Tron as a franchise, and despite the extra zero the company was hoping to see on the total gross for the film, those plans seem to be continuing. Disney is planning on a new animated series called Tron: Uprising, which will take place before the events of Tron: Legacy, after the coup by Clu and before the arrival of Sam. Elijah Wood, Mandy Moore and Bruce Boxleitner have all signed to lend their voices.

So it appears that Tron will not be disappearing anytime soon. With the animated series coming soon, the momentum should carry the franchise on until the next movie—a movie that has been rumored (heavy, massive emphasis on the rumor part) to be the first part of a trilogy that will take the franchise to five films—hits theaters in the future.

So if it is a given that Tron 3 will soon receive a green light, where will the franchise go? The writers have claimed that there is a larger plan, and Cillian Murphy—who made a brief cameo as the son of Edward Dillinger, one of the original film’s antagonists—is already signed on to play two roles, obviously one in the grid and one out. It seems possible, maybe even likely that he will be the new villain, although perhaps the filmmakers will play against character and have him be an ally to Sam.

So let the discussion begin! What would you like to see in a new Tron film? Head on over to our Tron 3 rumors article and join the discussion.